Wednesday, February 27, 2013

DRONES, TEXAS, STATES, AND TRENDS

February 27, 2013 By Joseph P. FarrellIn
the wake of the Sandy Hook School shooting tragedy – whatever really
happened, and there is a growing body of data to suggest the “official”
version is as leaky as the Warren Report or the various official
versions of 9/11 – the incident was seized upon by opportunists to ram
through yet another attempt to disarm the population. The usual
Dummycrooks whined and wrung hands about the dangers of guns and assault
weapons and so on, and came forth with the usual incrementalist
proposals, the end result of which is always the same: only the
government is allowed to have guns.
The only problem is, it backfired, big time; people of all walks,
demographics, and even political leaning or party affiliation, rushed to
the stores to stock up on guns of all types. Then various states began
to pass legislation and/or resolutions to prohibit and restrict the
effect in their territory.
Similarly, we saw after the passage of Obromneyackcare an attempt –
unsuccessful – to challenge the legislation via states bringing suit
against it on constitutional grounds. Additionally, there has been a
move by states to pass resolutions concerning lawful currency, and in
many cases, to limit the effects of the recent NDAA or National Defense
Authorization Act.
Now, Texas is considering legislation to limit the use of drones:13 Texas “Anti Drone” Laws Would be Toughest in USA
Now, there’s an interesting trend here, and it is this: whether one
wishes to admit it or not, there is a growing gulf between the Federal
government, which effectively has become nothing but an agent for the
corporate financial power, and therefore internationalist and globalist
in outlook, and the states, which, even in the case of extreme state
nuttery like Massachusetts, New York, or the worst of the lot,
California, there remain state vs federal tensions. The NDAA, which
received support from both Republithugs and Dummycrooks, for example,
has almost as much criticism from the Liberal ideological side as from
the Conservative or Libertarian.
What this spells, I suspect, is a trend beneath the trend. At the
surface level, the trend favors the Dummycrooks and the “blue” states.
But beneath this, there is a deeper realignment taking place, one
reflected in the growing efforts of states to fight increasing dictats
from imperial Washington. Some may look on this with favor, and indeed, I
am inclined to do so in some respects, but not all. What this trend
really means is that if you thought left-right political gridlock was
bad, wait until you experience groups of states vs. the federal
government.
What the trend portends, if we’re not careful, is that provincialism
and regionalism, vs the centralization and financial debasement, that
was the late western Roman empire, and we know how that ended… (and
that’s the point, it ended, for the old “way of doing things”
simply could not keep up, and was inadequate). Then, as now, the
decisions at the centralized center increasingly were ignorant of, or
chose to ignore, the concerns of the “periphery,”he more so as the
periphery was able to get “a better deal” from the barbarians than from
the center. And the center paid the price as the periphery simply
abandoned it. Of course, that’s a vast over-simplification of a great
deal, but the basic lesson remains: you ignore those “peripheral”
concerns to your peril.
In America it’s called “states’ rights” and a civil war was fought
over the issue, and though some would argue that the issue was settled,
others would say it was merely papered over, but never really went away.
But even that isn’t the point. Late imperial Rome’s problem wasn’t even
really political, nor political in terms of the center and centralizing
tendencies vs peripheral and de-centralizing ones. It was cultural. As
the suburbican dioceses of Italy became increasingly populated by
conquered populations imported as cheap slave labor, and eventually as
this population took over the imperial bureaucracy, the original Roman
nobility moved to the provinces, there to strike their deals with
invading barbarians. America is now similarly culturally divided, and
the political debate is merely a shadow of that split. It isn’t race,
for in spite of the best efforts of media to portray it as such, it
really isn’t. Neither is it a “legal citizen” vs “illegal immigrant”,
for those illegals are here because of a passionate desire for liberty.
It isn’t a rich vs. poor issue either. You will find all classes, races,
and demographics, on all sides. In the final analysis it is, really,
two different cultures with vastly different perspectives and
“ideologies”, held together – for the moment – by a common but
increasingly visibly corrupt government that really is but a collection
of special interests.